Green team plans return to Callaghan Park

IT will be a case of “back to the future” for Graeme and Julie Green when they return to Rockhampton in the coming months to be based at Callaghan Park with a string of 10 horses.

The husband and wife team has operated out of Deagon for the past five years after leaving the Beef Capital in search of greater opportunities.

That they found through gallopers of the calibre of Flying Riddle, a nine-time winner of more than $250,000 owned by Ron and Bev White and Maureen Olive, who proved he was well and truly up to metropolitan grade in Brisbane.

Mundi Gully, also owned by the Whites, provided Julie with arguably her biggest moment in racing when he lined up in the 2010 $2million Magic Millions Classic (1200m) at the Gold Coast running a credible seventh beaten just over six lengths behind Heinrich Bloodstock’s Military Rose.

As fate would have it Julie wasn’t trackside for the Millions instead choosing to leave race day duties to stable foreman Graeme and strapper daughter Sileas so she could be with her youngest daughter Zoe for the birth of her first child.

Spending more time with the grand children is a major motivator for Graeme and Julie’s return to Rocky.

“We’ve been a bit of a nomadic couple since we got married 30 odd years ago and it’s time for us to settle down into a bit of reality now and enjoy the grand children,” Graeme said this week revealing that Sileas will also relocate to be part of the Green team at Callaghan Park.

“She had a stint with Darley in Sydney when Peter Snowden was there and then she went to England for six months and worked there and now she’s with Kelly Schweida in Brisbane.”

Among the 10 horses in the Green stable will be Guissola, a two-time winning three-year-old colt by Poet’s Voice who was Listed placed during the Brisbane Winter Carnival and the ownership group knocked back offers of $300,000 from Singapore and $500,000 from Hong Kong to retain him to race.

Their string will also include horses that were placed at Callaghan Park on Rocky Cup Day this year in Margo Maree and Rio Rosie as well as five two-year-olds.

The Greens are also excited about a pending new arrival – a full sibling to Eminent Knight, a galloper Julie guided to consecutive wins at Toowoomba and Eagle Farm in 2016 before his Hong Kong owners took him back there to race under the name What Else But You.

“She’s due to foal this week – I’d love to be able to afford to race the full sibling myself,” Graeme said.

Eminent Knight came to the Greens untried in races after two other prominent south-east Queensland stables had written off his chances of making a racehorse so they know how to get one to run.

But as Graeme openly admits, returning to the old stomping ground won’t be easy work.

“I have a lot of respect for the trainers here (Rocky) – they are very under-rated,” he said.

“We’re not coming back thinking that we’re just going to have an easy kill.”

Money talks. Well at least it did at Callaghan Park on Thursday when the Shane Sigvart trained Toxophily was sensationally backed from $20 into as short as $1.24 in one fixed odds market and duly saluted in the maiden race to kick off the program.

Prominent Rocky owners Michael Rowe and Joe Ireland share in the ownership of both gallopers.

Rockhampton apprentice jockey Natalea Summers has started a gofundme page to raise funds to help save the family’s favourite race horse Vainacious who is at the University of Queensland Equine Hospital awaiting life-saving surgery on a severe hoof injury.